Cana and contemplation
It's not Blue Nun, it's the Epiphany
Wine is quite a miracle.
Admittedly that miracle is somewhat impaired in factory-vatted value brand Lambrusco or the horrors of a certain Blue Nun whom I hope you never have the misfortune to encounter, but even if it is drowned in sugar, the miracle is still there: the hidden miracle by which vines draw up water, and with the aid of the sun bear grapes which will ferment and turn to wine. Add time and old oak barrels to a wine of quality, and it will grow. It develops its own unique personality and voice, but keeps its unmistakable local accent for those whose senses are trained enough to a detect it. A serious wine lover can tell by colour, taste and smell not only what region a wine comes from, but even which bank of a river or whose plot of land.
It is a miracle enough that anything exists at all; even more of a miracle that our planet sustains life. How much more miraculous that simple water, the basic sustenance of life, should be transformed into the life-enhancing stuff of celebration. If you get serious about it, it can be the stuff even of contemplation, as you hone your senses to meditate on the secrets a fine wine can hold.
Our Lord’s changing of water into wine at Cana is his very first miracle or “sign,” as St John calls them. If the usual process of water turning into wine through vines is part of the miracle of God’s creation — the miracle that there is anything rather than nothing, and that what there is can be so very good — then what Jesus is doing here, is taking off his mask: which, after all, is what Epiphany is all about. When the Magi from the East come to visit, through their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, they unmask Christ as king, priest and healer. When the young Jesus gets lost in the temple, He is unmasked as a teacher of wisdom and an obedient son. When He is baptised by John in the Jordan, He is unmasked as the Son of the Father, cooperating with the Spirit, entering and blessing the waters. These are all episodes in the ongoing Epiphany, or revelation, of who Christ is.
Now, aged around 30, at a wedding, he performs his first miracle: not one of healing, or calming storms, walking on water, or raising the dead, but something less dramatic. He takes the ordinary stuff of this world and makes it into the very best and most special that it can become.
The turning of water into wine, Jesus’ first miracle, is the first of seven signs in the Gospel of St John that Jesus is the Messiah and is ushering in the Kingdom of Heaven. And what this miracle says about that Kingdom is that God takes what is natural and ordinary, and turns it into something supernatural and extraordinary. Water, ordinary stuff of the natural world, carries the potential for transformation into the supernatural, represented by wine.
If you thought that turning water into wine was just a party trick, then you’re missing the point. Take the first clue John gives us. The wedding takes place on the third day after Jesus’ baptism. Now, just like Jesus being lost for three days in the Temple as a child in the story we read last week, the three days motif should alert us instantly to the most important three days in the entire Christian story — because it was on the third day after Jesus died that he was resurrected from the dead: Easter day is the third day after Good Friday. So, John is giving us a clue that the story of the wedding at Cana is going to have something to do with resurrection, newness and fullness of life.
The next clue is the wine itself. Isaiah prophesies that there will be a Messiah, an anointed one, who will bring in a new Kingdom, like a great feast for all peoples, abundant with flowing new wine. The miracle at Cana is therefore another Epiphany revelation of Jesus as the promised Messiah.
Another clue is in Our Lord’s words to His Mother. When he calls Mary “woman,” this may sound rather abrupt. But Jesus is not being rude. He is an observant Jew, and honours his parents as the Torah commands. Rather, He is making another reference, this time, to God’s words to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, back in Genesis:
“I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
Jesus is the New Adam, born of Mary the new Eve, and he will indeed crush Satan’s dominion of power and death, but not without being “bitten” first by his own death on the Cross. The Crucifixion is when the mystical marriage is complete, and Jesus’ hour has come. The Resurrection is when the fullness of life of the Kingdom becomes clear.
Now, in his first miracle, Jesus is giving us a sign of what that Kingdom is like. It is not like destroying water and replacing it with wine, but like taking water and perfecting it, making it from something that merely sustains life into something which gives joy.
And so this episode of the Epiphany unmasks the mystery at the heart of the Christian faith. At Christmas, we learnt that the Word was made flesh, God became one of us in Christ. Now, we start to see why. The God behind the miracle of creation came into creation, to take on the water of our existence and turn it into fine wine. God shared the life of mortals so that we might share in the immortality of God. However weak and watery we may be, however dull and flavourless or even stagnant and bitter we might at some point find our lives, God has come not to destroy the miracle of nature, but to perfect it; not to deny who we are, but to perfect us, to bring out the best in us, and lift us up to the fullness of life.
That, too, is what the sacrament of Baptism does. It is no bare outward sign of an inward profession of faith. Through the water, we really die in spirit to sin and death and really participate in the resurrection and eternal life of Christ. We are regenerate, reborn. Baptism is no mere washing of the flesh, but of the soul. Through baptism, the water of our earthly life is transfigured into the fine wine of the Kingdom of Heaven. Through baptism, we become subjects and fellow-citizens of that Kingdom.
The Kingdom means not that God wants to destroy who we are and replace us with something better, but to take all that we are and bring us to Christ-like perfection.
The Kingdom means a world where everything is given not just for passing utility, but for eternal bliss.
The Kingdom means a world where everything is not to be taken at face value, but is an icon of a fuller and deeper reality.
By the waters of baptism we are clothed for the wedding feast and offered the wine of eternal life. In the Holy Eucharist, the same Christ who turned water in wine now turns wine into his own blood, shed for us, and offers Himself as drink and food. But the path of faith begins more simply, more subtly, as at Cana, with an appreciation of everyday miracles: by seeing Christ’s hand behind every meal on the table, His face behind every smile, His mind behind every fond memory, His welcome behind every decent glass of wine. For every good thing in this world is an icon of the eternal wedding banquet to which every one of us is personally invited. So, wait no longer. Come to the banquet, and feast.